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Cease Fire
In the Vulcan vs. Andoria '' |image= |series= |production=40358-041/215 |producer(s)= |story= |script=Chris Black |director=David Straiton |imdbref=tt0572188 |guests=Vaughn Armstrong as Admiral Forrest, Jeffrey Combs as Commander Shran, Suzie Plakson as Tarah, Gary Graham as Ambassador Soval, John Balma as Muroc, Zane Cassidy as Andorian Soldier and Christopher Shea as Andorian Captain Telev |previous_production=Stigma |next_production=Future Tense |episode=ENT S02E15 |airdate=12 February 2003 |previous_release=Stigma |next_release=Future Tense |story_date(s)=Unknown (2152) |previous_story=Stigma |next_story=Future Tense }} Summary The Andorians and the Vulcans are locked in battle over a planet situated on the frontier between their two systems. The Andorians call it "Weytahn," and the Vulcans "Paan Mokar", and it is claimed by both sides. Andorian Commander Shran, however, has broken the treaty and reoccupied a settlement. With the Vulcans calling for a cease fire, Shran seeks Captain Archer's help with negotiations. Vulcan Ambassador Soval is reluctant to bring Archer in as mediator, but three Vulcans have been taken hostage, and Shran only trusts Archer (particularly since the events of The Andorian Incident). Archer and Sub-Commander T'Pol head down the planet for a meeting with Shran. His lieutenant, Tarah, is especially wary of T'Pol, but Archer manages to convince Shran to release one of the hostages as a sign of good faith. Soval then agrees to negotiations, but remains skeptical. Meanwhile, Shran has a tense moment with Tarah, who objects to his attempts to negotiate with the Vulcans. She would rather fight to reclaim the planet for the Andorians. As the shuttlepod nears the planet, it is fired on and forced to crash-land. Soval suggests the Andorians are trying to sabotage the peace talks, but Archer doesn't believe Shran would resort to such tactics. Shran is furious that Archer's shuttle was downed, but Tarah claims that it was the Vulcans trying to frame the Andorians. Meanwhile, on Enterprise, Commander Tucker must keep the Vulcan and Andorian vessels from firing on each another. To do so, he maneuvers between the two groups. Down on the surface, Archer, T'Pol, and Soval are attempting to make their way to Shran's location, when Soval is shot. Archer discovers that renegade Andorians are behind the attack, and captures Tarah. She initially denies involvement, but eventually confesses, and angrily informs Shran that there are others who feel the same way. With the situation under control, and with Archer's help, the two sides agree to a ceasefire and continued peace talks. Errors and Explanations Nit Central # SMT on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 7:11 pm: Soval refers to the last time Archer dealt with the Andorians being at P'Jem. Actually, there was a later time, at Coridan. Shran correctly remembers this. Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 5:19 am: I also wondered about Soval not knowing about Shadows of P'Jem, but then wondered how much Soval would really know about it. Didn't Shran and the Andorians want to keep a low profile in that story? Did the Vulcans know the Andorians had been involved with Archer on Corridan? LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Given that Captain Sopek’s assault team confronted the Andorians toward the end of that episode, I would imagine he reported the encounter to his superiors, so Soval could certainly know about it, especially since Archer was involved, and Soval may be keeping tabs on him too. # Back in Dear Doctor, Phlox said that he had never seen very many unwell people at once, something like fifteen or twenty. Now he tells us he was an infantry medic, and seems to show experience with combat situations. Not impossible that he wouldn't have seen mass casualties during that time, but I found it interesting. He probably only witnessed combat troops being hurt in small groups. # We're told that a fight between Vulcan and Andorian spaceships would be an act of war? And what's the combat on the planet, an act of diplomacy? TJFleming on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:08 am: Wasn’t it that the Enterprise firing on one of them would be an act of war? (Of course, Enterprise helping to blockade the planet is already an act of war.) A Klingon on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 3:50 pm: Among my people, that’s considered a friendly greeting.LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: The Enterprise isn’t blockading the planet, Trip is just trying blocking the Vulcans and Andorian ships from firing on each other. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 10:34 pm: Armed conflict can occur without a formal declaration of war, and without the conflict leading to war. U.S. aircraft attacked targets on the outskirts of Bagdad on February 24, 1999, and U.S. and British aircraft attacked two communications and control facilities outside Baghdad just this past Friday, but this is not considered an act of war. Armed conflicts can be referred to or euphemized as "police actions," "skirmishes," etc., depending on their scale and their implications. Obviously, the Andorians and the Vulcans have been in "conflict" for at least a century, but not to a scale that is considered all-out war. Forrest tells Archer in the opening scene of Act 1 that "they’ve nearly gone to war over Mokar twice in the past century." SMT on Monday, February 17, 2003 - 8:13 am: Luigi, something can be an act of war without necessarily leading to a declaration of war. A nation can always turn the other cheek. A matter of semantics, perhaps. And two, technically, the war with Iraq never quite ended. An armistice was signed, with a permanent peace contingent on Iraq performing certain actions. Iraq hasn't performed those actions, leading to the current rather disgusting spectacle. (I raise this not to promulgate a stand for or against renewed military action, but to put the example you gave into context. Those were acts of war, but they did in fact occur during a state of war.) # The first time Archer and T'Pol went planetside, they were unarmed. The second time, when they're carrying a Vulcan ambassador to sensitive negotiations, they're both packing. How convenient. Not really – The first time, they probably left the weapons behind to demonstrate their peaceful intentions. The second time, they decided to carry weapons as a precaution, in order to protect the ambassador. # Sparrow47 on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 7:37 pm: T'Pol tells Archer that she gave him all the information on the dispute so that he'd be well-informed about the situation. However, it appeared that Archer only had one night to go over it. If they knew that Archer would be negotiating from the beginning, why didn't T'Pol pass the information along to begin with? Some of it may not have been available straight away. # I know it's been a while since Soval was a soldier, but come on. The first time a shot comes near the party, all three of them flop to the ground rather quickly. However, the next time, when they are directly shot at, Soval gets down briefly, then stands up and sort of wanders backward. Of course, this allows him to get shot. But, why exactly did he stand up in the first place, given the situation? He could be trying to divert the attacker’s attention away from the others. # Those Andorian terraformers do some amazing work. Not only did they make a class-D planetoid habitable, they gave it Earth-like gravity in the process, even though it was only about the size of the Moon. A few other observations here. First of all, the atmosphere they created seems extremely thin, given that it can't be seen at all from orbit. And second of all... Class-D? I almost missed this one, but we've previously heard planet types designated through the use of Vulcan words... Menshara-class, for example. I know that's eventually supposed to be shortened to "M-Class," but that hasn't happened yet, or so I thought. What's up with "D-class"? Why would Andorians use a planetary designation system developed by their mortal enemy? # After disarming the first Andorian who was shooting at them, Archer throws something over the wall. At first I thought it was the guy's weapon, but then Archer runs away with said phaser. So... what did he chuck over the wall? elwood on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 6:24 am: He threw his PISTOL over the wall and took his rifle. (I would take the pistol too.) Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:18 am: So he had two weapons? Okay. I can't remember a time when we've seen anyone carrying two different types of energy weapons around.Josh M on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 6:44 pm: The Jem'Hadar that Sisko tackled shortly after escaping imprisonment in The Jem’Hadar had both a pistol and a rifle. # The flaming wreckage left behind after the shuttle crashed looked an awful lot like someone had sprayed something on it so that they'd have something to burn, not like it was actually, you know, on fire. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: If the fuel contained an anti-misting agent to prevent the burning fuel to spray over a large area upon crash, and if dirt was sprayed onto large areas of the shuttle upon the crash, it’s not impossible for only isolated pieces to be on fire. #Tarah claims the Andorian weapons have no stun setting. So, why wasn't Soval killed when he was shot? LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Perhaps in order to be fatal, the beam has to hit the head or heart. The beam hit Soval’s left trapezius, and as he swung in body in reaction to being shot, the beam panned down his left shoulder and the top of his left pectoral. When T’Pol inspects the wound, it’s in that area. Since a Vulcan’s heart is where a human’s liver is, as established in A Private Little War (TOS), perhaps this is why he didn’t die. Sparrow47 on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 10:17 pm: Hmmmm... First of all, I think you're putting a little too much movement into where the beam hits Soval. Granted I don't have a direct visual to go off of, but it looked like he got hit only in one place, and indeed, the examination of the wound reveals just one "impact" point (I honestly can't think of a better term right now) on the shoulder, not a roving wound that moves down. Next, I guess I don't get, if the Andorian weapon doesn't have a stun setting, how they're supposed to be better than the firearms we have today. The advantage of Starfleet's phaser is that you can shoot at someone and not kill them. This isn't always possible with a pistol. Why do the Andorians even use phasers and the like if this there's no benefit? Does that make sense? Merat on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 11:07 pm: Well, I guess it would depend on how many times you can fire the weapon without depleating the charge. Also, the accuracy may be very good. inblackestnight on Thursday, June 04, 2009 - 6:17 am: Although this is somewhat inconsistant in Trek, ex this series: this ep and the second of the Babel arc in season four with Tallas, don't these energy weapons affect the nervous system so no matter where you get hit it should work? Seniram 12:04, October 27, 2018 (UTC) The weapon could have been low on power, and therefore incapable of delivering a fatal beam – assuming Tarah was telling the truth about the lack of stun setting on Andorian weapons. ''' # Soval comments that the last time Archer was mixed up with the Andorians, he gave away the location of a crucial spy outpost and ended up getting the P'Jem monastery destroyed. Oh, really? Funny, I thought the last time Archer was mixed up with the Andorians was when he was captured by the Andorians on Coridan... which didn't have anything to do with P'Jem. ''Josh M on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 6:44 pm:'' He wasn't captured by the Andorians. He was captured by Coridan rebels. The Andorians helped bust him out.' # ''MarkN on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 - 10:22 pm: About the only nit in this ep I noticed is when Archer and T'Pol go down for the first time and the Andorians capture them. Since only Archer was expected, the Andorians should've only had one hood to put over his head but they just happened to have two instead so they could put it over T'Pol's. Why? Did they suspect that Archer just might bring someone else with him? If so then it was never mentioned. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Nothing I saw indicated that they were only expecting Archer. Archer explicitly establishes that he wasn’t told to come alone, and it only makes sense that he would bring a security officer or someone else with him. What Tarah said was, "He’s expecting you…without a Vulcan escort." It’s possible that she was ticked off not because he had an escort, but because the escort was Vulcan.Josh M on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 6:44 pm: Maybe it's standard equipment. In case they capture prisoners, they can always have them handy to drape over their heads. # Trike on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 12:08 am: Why would an Andorian refer to a human as a "pink skin"? Human and Vulcan skin tones are similiar. Not all humans have pink skin, anyway. Right, Travis and Hoshi? LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Except that Shran had never met Travis and Hoshi. The only humans he ever met were Archer and Trip, and possibly Reed and his assault team in The Andorian Incident. Although he is on the Enterprise at the end of the episode, he may not have noticed Hoshi or Travis as he passed through the bridge.Josh M on Sunday, February 23, 2003 - 6:44 pm: He's always referred to Archer as a "pinkskin." Vulcan skin has a more yellowish/greenish tint. And as has been mentioned, Shran has never met Travis and Hoshi (besides, maybe all humans look alike to Andorians. Personally, I think that Asian and Caucasian skin tones are very close) constanze on Monday, December 08, 2003 - 10:33 am: I wondered about "pink skin", too, since humans obviously don't have pink skins - and in contrast to the vulcans, even with good lighting on the ship, the vulcans look more grey-green than green, and not noticeably different in skin colour than humans. I wondered why the andorian was complying with human metaphor of pink skin instead of calling humans a nick-name from an andorian point of view, like "tentacle-less" or "pale-skin" or like that. Thande on Monday, January 17, 2005 - 2:25 pm: Maybe, to Andorian eyes, humans look bright pink. Having under evolved under the different light of Procyon (not sure if that's canon, come to think of it...) they might well have eyes sensitive to different wavelengths. ScottN on Monday, January 17, 2005 - 2:37 pm: The MRM indicates that Andor(ia) orbits Epsilon Indi. Thande on Monday, January 17, 2005 - 2:55 pm: In that case they should be able to see into the infrared, but violet should be black to them (in theory; Epsilon Indi is a cool red star). I think my point is still a reasonable one. # Forrest described the colony as on the frontier between the Vulcans and Andorians' systems. Territory or space might have been a more descriptive word. Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:18 am: Actually, wasn't it established that the two systems are really close to each other? I'm not sure this is so bad. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: The American Heritage Dictionary defines "frontier" as 1. An international border, or the area along it. 2. A region just beyond or beside a settled area. 3. An undeveloped area for discovery or research. How is the words use here not descriptive enough? The Undesirable Element on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 4:25 pm: I thought that The Andorian Incident established that Andoria and Vulcan were in neighboring systems. LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 6:18 pm: It did. Act 2, to be exact. # I thought Soval was the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. Don't they another for the Andorians? Considering Soval's attitude toward Archer, I'm stunned that he even agreed to summon him to the colony. Dragon on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 3:06 pm: Soval was recalled to Vulcan after the loss at P'Jem. I believe it was in the teaser of Fallen Hero. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Shadows of P'Jem, actually, and he said he was being recalled "for consultation," not permanently. It is possible that he was recalled and reassigned, but if that’s true, then that would mean he can only show up in episodes featuring Andorian matters, and I have a feeling the writers won’t want to limit themselves to that. On the other hand, he tells Archer in the beginning of Act 3 that he negotiated the last accord on Paan Mokar. Perhaps he has expertise with both humans and Andorians, and he is sometimes reassigned between the two? # On the return trip with Soval, I'm glad Archer was able to bring down the shuttle in the middle of an empty street, even though his visibility had to be extremely limited. Also, note that as the shuttle is landing, the wings are extended and taking damage, but when we see Archer and the others leave the shuttle, the wings still have retracted. KAM on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 5:22 am: My interpretation of that was that the pieces of metal we see on the ground leading up to the shuttlepod was the wing. I assumed it was torn off not retracted.LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: It clearly looked like the wing. We not only saw that the part of the wing that was attached to the shuttle was ruined, but the portion of the shuttle where it was attached was all scorched too. # When Archer and T'Pol are going through the empty building searching for Shran the first time, you can see an Andorian walk past the open doorway behind them. Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:18 am: I thought that was odd, but I didn't see it as a nit, rather it was a way to show "there be Andorians here!" Trike on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 10:52 am: To Sparrow, I pointed out the wandering Andorian because he looked out of place back there. He seemed to me to be casually walking past the door. He didn't stop, notice or raise a weapon toward Archer and T'Pol, as the group of Andorians did just after that. And I thought Archer and T'Pol looked silly, searching for an Andorian, any Andorian, when there's one walking right behind them. LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: He wasn’t looking for "any" Andorian. He was looking for Shran. # Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 5:19 am: Wasn't Class-D the designation for Gas Giants? LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: I don’t recall any episode mentioning it, but I could be wrong. If there is one, it would have to be after the 96/97 TV season (DS9 season5/VOY season3), because there’s no entry for "Class D" in the Encyclopedia (only J, K, L, and M). The only designations for gas giants I can recall off the top of my head were Extreme Risk (VOY), which referred to the gas giant as a "Class 6," and Broken Bow, which referred to that gas giant as a "Class 7." Do you remember which ep it was, Keith? KAM on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 6:25 am: I think it might have been the gas giant in Starship Down (DS9), but I don't have the episode on tape to check. The planet in Gravity (Voyager) was said to be Class-D, as was Regula I in Star Trek II. (Neither of which were gas giants, however.) ''Seniram 12:04, October 27, 2018 (UTC)''Indeed, Spock described Regula as ‘Essentially, a great rock in space’ # If the Vulcans had a prior claim to the planet, then why didn't they show up when the Andorians were starting their terraforming project? According to NextGen, Terraforming takes decades. Instead the Vulcans show up after the planet has been changed and claim ownership. TJFleming on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:08 am: Black Letter Law: improvements by a trespasser belong to the owner.' KAM on Friday, February 14, 2003 - 5:04 am: So the Vulcans just sat back, twiddled their thumbs and waited for the Andorians to do all the hard work, then came up and claimed ownership and kicked the Andorians off the planet? Also what proof did the Vulcans have for claiming ownership? Did they plant the Vulcan flag or land space probes on it prior to the Andorians arriving or did they just say, "See those big, honking guns on our powerful warships? That's our proof of ownership, antennae boy." LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: T’Pol didn’t say they had a prior claim. She explains that the Andorians refused to let the Vulcans inspect their colony for a military base, so the Vulcans simply decided to annex it to protect their territory. # So Soval can't hit with a phaser after (only) 50 years without training? I thought vulcans were so superior. (But obviously these vulcans differ from the future's.) LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: He may know how to fire it, but depending on how old he is, his eyesight or aim may not be what it once was. Moreover, the weapon may be one he wasn’t used to, and he was an intelligence officer, not an infantryman, so we don’t know the extent of his weapons experience. # Sparrow47 on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 7:18 am: And here's a new one. Why doesn't anyone in the future have grenades? If Tarah really wanted to kill our heroes, after she got them pinned down, lobbing in a grenade would have done the job nicely. Even something as old-fashioned as a fragmentary grenade, even! And since one of the Andorians has a height advantage on the group, I think they could get a good throw, easily. Too risky – anyone in the target area would likely see it coming, and either get out of the way or – possibly – find some way to deflect it back the way it came. # TJFleming on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 10:55 am: Rare flash of brilliance for Archer: using a nonsensical definition of compromise (neither party satisfied) to rationalize a bad negotiation, and getting the parties to buy it by attributing it to “someone.” (Actually, a compromise should leave both parties thinking they got away with something--Ambrose Bierce--but of course you wouldn't say that to the parties.) Trike on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 12:29 pm: TJ, the only place I've heard that saying before was in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Calvin said, "A good compromise leaves everybody mad." So, I guess Archer should have attributed it to Bill Watterson. Boy, what does that say about the literture Archer has read? Darth Sarcasm on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 3:04 pm: Since The Devil's Dictionary preceded Calvin and Hobbes by almost a century, who's to say the latter could have been his only source? Besides, I think there are plenty of fruits of wisdom to be found in Calvin and Hobbes. # Hans Thielman on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 12:07 pm: Given that Soval has been on Earth for decades, I would think he would be familiar with the expression: "The ball's in your court." LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: Where did he say he was on Earth for decades? I couldn’t find it. Also, I wouldn’t expect someone to learn EVERY SINGLE colloquial phrase, even if they were there for decades, especially given the way slang is spread through the entertainment media, and Soval is not likely to take in a lot of the culture or entertainment on Earth. My mom’s been in this country for over 40 years, and my father for about 35. They don’t know every single slang phrase. :) Dragon on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 5:47 pm: IIRC, it was implied if not stated in Broken Bow. During the teaser when young Jon Archer and his father are painting the model spaceship, Jon sarcastically refers to "Ambassador Pointy Ears" (or something like that), and Henry Archer tells him not to refer to Soval that way. Then at Starfleet Medical when Admiral Forrest decides to let Enterprise take Klaang home, Soval says agitatedly, "Admiral, listen to me. You're making a mistake!" Archer then tells Soval, "When logic doesn't work, you raise your voice? You've been on Earth too long." LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 - 2:09 am: Yeah, I remember the line from Broken Bow, though it doesn't necessarily means he was on Earth all that time. In fact, the comment young Jonathan made was whether his dad's ship would be as fast as "Ambassador Pointy Ears" ship. It's possible Soval only visited Earth sporadically at that point. As for the adult Archer's comment, it was a sarcastic remark, and not very specific anyway about how long he'd been there. It's possible Soval never heard the phrase. # SlugBug on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 10:54 pm: May be my mistake, but it sounded like the Andorian's terraformed this planet in 2097, was it 2047? That would make sense since they kept saying "100 years" of conflict blah blah... incursion of 2112!!!!!! Hold the Red Star Proudly High In Hand!! LOL LUIGI NOVI on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 11:29 pm: T'Pol said the Andorians began terraforming it "a century" ago, and that once the Vulcans saw that they had developed an atmosphere on it, they took it from them in 2097. This makes sense, since terraforming a planet takes at least 35 years by the time of Home Soil (TNG), so it makes sense that may take about 50 in the 2000's. SlugBug on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 2:07 am: I watched this ep. again. The Vulcans, according to T'Pol, kicked the Andorians off the planet after they developed an atmosphere and established a colony, NEARLY A CENTURY AGO>! "The planet has been deserted for nearly a century" T'Pol said. The Vulcans then claimed the planet 50 odd years later in 2097. Yes, it would have made more sense if the terraforming took 50 years, but according to the dialogue it took only a short while to develop an atmosphere, then to colonize. # LUIGI NOVI on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 4:29 am: When Archer and Soval first meet on the Enterprise in Act 1, Soval asks him why Shran would ask for his help, and doesn’t seem to know why Shran trusts Archer. Doesn’t Soval know that Shran was the Andorian at P’Jem that Archer helped obtain proof of the surveillance station? Is there any episode with Andorians whose events this guy knows about? Perhaps he can’t understand how a Human had managed to gain the trust of an Andorian! # In the continuing tradition of showing absolutely no sense of scale among the military or government of a planet, a "regimental" Andorian commander is conducting high-level negotiations with a Vulcan ambassador. Is the armed soldier in charge of the regiment that just wounded a dozen Vulcans and captured three the best guy to negotiate? He may be planning to use the captives as a bargaining chip in the negotiations. # Jesse on Saturday, December 20, 2008 - 7:03 pm: In the captain's mess, when Trip comments that he doesn't like pushing the injectors to 110%, T'Pol replies that "they're rated to one hundred twenty." BZZZT! As an engineer, that statement is nonsensical. A rating on a piece of electrical or mechanical equipment specifies the maximum amount of "x" that said equipment can source, sink, pass, develop, absorb, radiate, etc., according to the manufacturer or other independent rating and/or warranting agency. I have no idea what quantity is being described when Trip says 110%, but it doesn't matter. For our terms, let's take a motor. Let's say that the manufacturer designs a 10-horsepower (hp) electrical motor (and that it receives independent certification from UL or the CSA, for instance). When the motor is supplying 10hp of mechanical force, it is supplying 100% of its rated power. If it is rated to 12hp, then 12hp is 100% rated power. The point is that the 100% point is the point that the manufacturer defines as the upper limit of operation; using the device beyond this point exceeds the manufacturer's rating and generally voids the warranty. Now, there's nothing wrong the statement that the injectors are at 110%. Every engineer, including Scotty (as evidenced in the TNG ep Relics), knows that, on paper, ratings are conservative. If you have 10hp motor that's designed to be powered by 3-phase 13.2kV system and you increase the voltage to 13.5kV, you can (depending on the motor type) maybe push it to 10.5 or 11hp (I'm making these voltages up, as an example), with 11hp being the point at which the motor is delivering 110% of rated power. But, as I said, the rating itself is always the 100% value, not, as T'Pol suggests, the 120%. The more appropriate statement would have been, "The injectors can withstand 120% with little to no difficulty (or problem)." ' Perhaps the 120% value is in relation to the initial design specs.' # Jesse on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - 1:57 pm: Something about Soval's involvement in this border dispute bothers me. He states directly in this episode that he is posted to Earth. That means that his assignment is Earth. So why is he handling this police action with the Andorians? Already, my mind is flooding with perfectly logical reasons why Soval would be involved: 1: Soval's prior experience with the Andorians and this planet makes him the logical choice; 2: The actual Vulcan official in charge is sick or otherwise indisposed; 3: Soval may be "posted" on Earth but his actual assignment encompasses multiple star systems, including the disputed one; 4: There is no Vulcan official assigned to handle the matter; Soval is merely the closest; 5: Soval was requested directly because of his clout or seniority (something that Shran hints at in this episode). "So," you say, "if you have plenty of reasons why Soval is involved, why flag his involvement as a nit?" The reason is simple: I said that my mind was flooding with reasons. But TPTB have displayed time and time again that they don't have the first clue when it comes to governments, politics, etc.--the classic case in point being that the Earth gov't depicted in Enterprise disappears by Kirk's time, even though other planets have planetary governments. It's why Starfleet officers are patrolling the streets of New Orleans in (DS9) Paradise Lost. It's why the President of the Federation Council sends out a "planetary distress signal" in ST4. It's why mention is made that the Bajoran militia would be folded into Starfleet upon Bajor's admission to the UFP. It's why Tom Paris (VOY) makes mention of a Federation Maritime Patrol to patrol Earth's oceans (what happened to the United States Coast Guard?).Perhaps the United States Coast Guard was reformed as the Federation Maritime Patrol, in the same way that NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) became NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The point is, I think that Soval was involved for the same reason that Picard & Sisko can pick up a phone and call Gowron anytime they please, or the fact that the Grand Nagus hangs out with Quark and Rom, or that Archer is buddy-buddy with Shran, Duros, and the like. Soval was involved, not because of a well-thought-out reason, but b/c TPTB tend to reuse people this way without regard to realism. Luigi_novi (Luigi_novi) on Thursday, December 25, 2008 - 2:37 pm: As for Soval, Trike and Dragon mentioned the nit about Soval's presence on the prior boards, and I offered my thoughts about it. I pointed out that he said he was being recalled "for consultation", not permanently. I also conceded that it was possible that he was recalled and reassigned, but if that were true, it might mean that he would only be able to show up thereafter in episodes involving the Andorians, which ended up not being the case. I also pointed out that he tells Archer in the beginning of Act 3 that he negotiated the last accord on Paan Mokar, and speculated that he has expertise with both humans and Andorians, and is sometimes reassigned between the two. As for the scale of governments and civil delegation, yeah, I agree, but I don't know if the two example you cite are the best ones. Starfleet could've been assigned to the Changeling matter in Paradise Lost because they had experience and knowledge of Changelings, and might've been assigned them in addition to civil authorities. Starfleet/The Federation may have jurisdiction in interstellar matters. As for the whale probe, only Earth and ships approaching it were endangered, so it didn't make sense to send out an Alpha Quadrant or Federation-wide distress signal, at least other than "Stay away from Earth". The implicit idea may have been, stated only in shorthand, may have been, "I'm going to notify Earth President Whoever to send out a planetary distress signal if he hasn't already", or "No doubt Earth President Whoever has already sent out a planetary distress call on planetary channels; I'm going to order the same on Federation channels…" ' # ''inblackestnight on Thursday, June 04, 2009 - 6:17 am: After Archer disarms the first Andorian pinning down the two Vulcans he throws his pistol away while keeping the rifle. Why not keep both? '''That would leave him with too much to carry. In addition, the rifle will, logically, have a bigger power capacity and longer range. # On the second approach to the planet the shuttle is shot down and nobody seems to know who did it until the end. How about looking at the color of the beams? With a blue beam it's a safe bet they're coming from Andorian weapons. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Andorians were responsible – the weapons could have been captured! Category:Episodes Category:Enterprise